Heirloom Blueberry Cuttings, Part I, Background

Old School Tech has released an article introducing a new series on heirloom blueberry cuttings. This project is simple, uses simple materials, makes a great homeschool earth science project, and can create a large number of new plants from a single shoot. As the article mentioned, we had the material for hundreds of new cuttings back in 2014, but because of the subsequent burglary and city government shenanigans, we became distracted and those cuttings which we did process and start ultimately died from neglect. This new process is easier for us to maintain and monitor, so we are optimistic that it will turn out better than the previous effort.

Speaking of neglect, these heirloom blueberry bushes have been neglected for decades while the property was under the control of a non-profit. We bought this school complex in late 2013, but didn’t move in until late 2014. The summer of 2014, we noticed that a large number of berries would disappear during the weekends. We didn’t mind much, since there was still many more than we could use, and we were happy to share this bounty in the interest of being good neighbors.

As mentioned in the article, in late 2014 I invited a horticulture friend over to do the first maintenance those bushes had had in a long time. I had planned to use the hundreds of cuttings which would have resulted as gifts to neighbors in all directions. What better gift to some of the local families than some blueberry bushes grown from the stock at the school where many of their ancestors grew up? After our friend was done, we took all her cuttings and began soaking them in root stimulator in preparation for this process.

As the regular readers know, however, the gift to us in 2015 was burglary, a studious disregard of this criminal intrusion and a city government intent on intimidation and deceit. Seeing how many people had been willing to partake of the bounty of these bushes, but not lift a finger to their care or maintenance, I should not have been surprised. There are some biblical themes hiding in that somewhere.

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[…] from normal cuttings techniques, it appears to be producing promising results so far. As mentioned last week, we had great results a couple of years ago from these same plants. This time, we’re giving […]

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